Saudi's Yansab cuts PE, PP shipments for up to two months - buyers

31 August 2012 07:11[Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Yanbu National Petrochemical Co (Yansab) has reduced allocations to customers for up to two months because of an extended outage at its polyolefins units in ?xml:namespace>Saudi Arabia, its buyers said late on Thursday.

Delays in shipments of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) cargoes may last two weeks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, while some Asian customers received notice that availability of September and October shipments will be reduced for polypropylene (PP) injection and film grades, they said.

“Supply conditions for [PP] will only normalise in November,” one northeast Asian buyer said.

Some Indian buyers said that although high density PE (HDPE) film material was offered for September shipments, they were informed that quantities are limited because of the outage at Yansab.

“Supply from SABIC has been low for HDPE film over the past few months. Now, with the Yansab outage, availability gets further curtailed,” a Mumbai-based trader said.

Saudi petrochemical giant SABIC owns 51% of Yansab.

Yansab has extended the unplanned shutdown at its polymer plants in Yanbu up to end-August, following an outage at the company's cracker at the site on 17 August, the sources said.

The affected units include a LLDPE, HDPE and PP, with a nameplate capacity of 400,000 tonnes/year each, the sources said. The cracker at the site has a 1.3m tonne/year ethylene capacity.

Yansab announced on 24 August that the affected units have resumed normal operations.